"Beggar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... possibly have been the English poet, John Gay, (1685-1732) whose best known piece "The Beggar's Opera" was said to have made "The Rich gay and Gay rich"? He was buried in Westminster Abbey. His epitaph was by Alexander Pope, followed by Gay's own mocking couplet, "Life is a jest, and all things show it. I thought so once and ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... Aquitaine being too hot to hold him, and the Normans in Ireland refusing to enlist him, he came through the Breach of Roland and took service under the Crescent. He was once a slave among the Moors of Andalusia, and owes his deformity to that. He cozened an old beggar into treating his leg with some ointment which would wither it up so that he could not work, and ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... Marley, was dirty and sticky beyond words, and she was the daintiest, freshest, sweetest girl imaginable. But she smiled and held out her arms and he just tumbled into them. She hugged the little beggar close, never minding her pretty gown, and brought him back to her seat. She seemed to know just what to do—took off his shoes, loosened the neck of his dress and all that, then cuddled him down and sang to him ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... repeated constantly. It was in vain that Valentin assured and reassured her with the most solemn oaths. "Let me alone; you are lying out of pity. I understand it all now; you never loved me; you are only sorry for me. The beggar woman had no interest in deceiving me. It is only too true—I am ugly. I do not see how you can endure ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... a jollier beggar than I am, your Honor," said Max Grimeau, grinning like an Alsatian over a Strasbourg pie. "It was I sang bass in the ballad as you came in—you might have heard ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... flushed to Fitz's forehead again—for he was, as Poole afterwards told him, a beggar to blush—and he gave a sudden start which made Poole move a little farther off to ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... on the church and the law; Search all the world through, From the king on his throne, To the beggar—you'll own There are none like the gipsy crew. Wherever we rove, We're sure to find home; In field, lane, or grove, Then roam, boys, roam! 'Tis only when walls his poor body surround, That homeless a free ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... hear the deafening noises of the cow horns blown by the streetcar drivers, or the pescador shrilly inviting housekeepers to buy the repulsive-looking red fish, carried over his shoulder, slung on a thick bamboo. Perhaps you meet a beggar on horseback (for there wishes are horses, and beggars do ride), who piteously whines for help. This steed-riding fraternity all use invariably the same words: "Por el amor de Dios dame un centavo!" ("For the love of God give me a cent.") If you bestow it, he will call on his patron ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... then to be careful," said my uncle, losing for the instant his control, "for you loved the spend-thrift best, and I should be but a beggar now without my wisdom." ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... that dog that sleeps in the High Street. Always was a dog asleep there—always. Always... I'd like to see the old shop again. I daresay old Ruck still stands between the sheep at his door, grinning with all his teeth, and Marbel, silly beggar! comes out with his white apron on and a pencil stuck behind his ear, trying to look awake... Wonder if they know it's me? I'd like 'em somehow ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... Timon said, "Yon gold is mine. I will make you rich, Flavius, if you promise me to live by yourself and hate mankind. I will make you very rich if you promise me that you will see the flesh slide off the beggar's bones before you feed him, and let the debtor die in jail ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... I should prefer that you keep the blue room for Paul Vence, who wishes to come. It is possible, too, that Choulette may come without warning. It is his habit. We shall see him some morning ringing like a beggar at the gate. You know my husband is mistaken when he thinks Le Menil pleases me. And then I must go to Paris next week for two or ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... the creator of pantomime in England, which he introduced at Lincoln's Inn Fields in April, 1716, and in which, under the stage name of Lun, he played the part of Harlequin. At Lincoln's Inn Fields, January 29, 1728, he produced 'The Beggar's Opera', which, after being refused at Drury Lane, made "Gay 'rich', and Rich 'gay'." "Great Faustus" probably alludes to the war between the two theatres, and the rival productions of 'Harlequin Dr. Faustus' at Drury Lane in 1723, and of 'The Necromancer, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... against a beggar who is going about saying that, when wounded in France, he was so full of bullets that they took him back to the Base in an ammunition wagon ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... die, Dost make a mighty island fly— The sums, I mean, of good French gold For which a mighty island sold; Who dost betray intelligence, Abuse the dearest confidence, And, private fortune to create, Most falsely play the game of state; Who dost within the Alley sport Sums which might beggar a whole court, 90 And make us bankrupts all, if Care, With good Earl Talbot,[134] was not there: Thou daring infidel! whom pride And sin have drawn from Reason's side; Who, fearing his avengeful rod, Dost wish not to believe ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... Anglicized Prussian, and Dr. Greene, both names well known in English music. Pepusch had had the leading place, before Handel's arrival, as organist and conductor, and made a distinct place for himself even after the sun of Handel had obscured all of his contemporaries. He wrote the music of the "Beggar's Opera," which was the great sensation of the times, and which still keeps possession of the stage. Pepusch was chiefly notable for his skill in arranging the popular songs of the day, and ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... I shouldn't care to have to analyse it. As for the jokes in it, they were about as plentiful as wasps in January. All that's true enough. Still, nevertheless, speaking for my humble self, he thrust home. You did, Jack, you beggar! You'd no business to, but you actually had the impudence to make me feel ashamed of myself. And, of course, I don't know what you others will say, but I vote we bury the hatchet in old Thompson's biggest ...
— Jack of Both Sides - The Story of a School War • Florence Coombe
... bishop of Tours, was in early life a soldier, and meeting with a naked beggar one cold day in winter divided his military cloak in two, and gave him the half of it; was conspicuous both as a monk and bishop for his compassion on the poor; seated at a banquet on one occasion between the king and queen, hobnobbed with a poor beggar looking on, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... three living on my money, on the allowance of ten thousand francs which I have made you since I drove you out of my house. Will you tell him also why I drove you out? Because I surprised you with this beggar, this wretch, your lover! Tell him what I was, an honorable man, whom you married for money, and whom you deceived from the very first day. Tell him who you are, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... never ceasing wholly, save at the dead hours of night. He thought to himself what a quantity of business there must be to do. Certainly, there must be room for one more worker. So, on the whole, the busy scene gave him courage, and he sauntered along as cheerfully as if he were not next-door to a beggar. ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... of mind, as she had shown the other day, was still at heart a savage or, at the least, a thrall of demon gods. The tribe that I ruled was conquered, the beautiful city where I dwelt was a ruin, I was homeless and a beggar, and my fortune would be great if in the issue I escaped death or slavery. All this I could have borne, for I had borne the like before, but the cruel end of my last surviving son, the one true joy of my desolate life, I could not bear. The ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... which forces painters to paint such pictures, was never in any age more evident. Hunt in his beggar-man, in his forlorn children, and other pictures of the same class, unfolds a beauty that men should ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... physician in attendance. Were you a young prince you could not be more royally cared for. Think of having one of the best New York surgeons at your beck and call here in this wilderness. You are a lucky beggar!" ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... he said off-handedly, "I hope you don't mind. My man will be coming down by the next train with our traps. I never travel without him, he's such a useful beggar. You can manage to put him up somewhere, I suppose? I was a fool not to have mentioned it before, but the lad entirely slipped my memory. He helps me, too, in other things, and there is always a good deal to be learned from the servants' hall, you know, Sir Nigel.... You can manage with Dollops, ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... flabbergast, stagger, throw on one's beam ends, fascinate, turn the head, take away one's breath, strike dumb; make one's hair stand on end, make one's tongue cleave to the roof of one's mouth; make one stare. take by surprise &c. (be unexpected) 508. be wonderful &c. adj.; beggar description, beggar the imagination, baffle description; stagger belief. Adj. surprised &c. v.; aghast, all agog, breathless, agape; open- mouthed; awestruck, thunderstruck, moonstruck, planet-struck; spellbound; lost in amazement, lost in wonder, lost in ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... had tramped two hundred versts as a beggar, though he was tattered and had grown thin and weatherbeaten, though he had cropped his long hair and was wearing a peasant's cap and boots, and though he bowed very humbly, Sergius still had the impressive appearance that made him so attractive. But Praskovya Mikhaylovna did not recognize ...
— Father Sergius • Leo Tolstoy
... of, go under the name of, pass under the name of, rejoice in the name of. Adj. named &c. v.; hight[obs3], ycleped, known as; what one may well, call fairly, call properly, call fitly. nuncupatory[obs3], nuncupative; cognominal[obs3], titular, nominal, orismological[obs3]. Phr. "beggar'd ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... further particulars to add. He had heard that the Scotts were great upstarts, and that the new owner of the castle had actually been a beggar in New York. A great lawsuit had resulted in favour of her and her husband, making them the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... asked himself again and again in periods of reaction from the nervous strain of some exciting experience. "Shall I never seize any of these chances that are always thrusting themselves at me? Shall I always act like a Neapolitan beggar? Will the ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... actor who plays various parts: First comes a boy, then out a lover starts; His garb is changed for, lo! a beggar's rags; Then he's a merchant with full money-bags; Anon, an aged sire, wrinkled and lean; At last Death drops ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... "you are even more foolish than I thought. How is a man advantaged by what happens when he is dead? Why, to-day that blind beggar whining on the temple steps means more to Egypt than all the mummies of all the Pharaohs, unless they can be robbed. Take what life can give you, Ana, and do not trouble about the offerings which are laid in the tombs ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... won enough. It's the splendid sense of growing power. It's the thirst that grows with the wine you drink. It's fighting and conquering. It is the magnificent dream of world-mastery. The money itself!" He spread his hands contemptuously. "That is a beggar's reward—it's the symbol of Might ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... could git hold of a cent at all, it would go fer medicine, or somethin' fer you to eat. After you got well, he found a place to work, and wuz a-tryin' to git back the home, when he went and got killed, a-tryin' to keep a poor, good-fer-nothin' beggar from bein' run over by the streetcar. All he left me wuz you to look after, and you ain't never had a bit of sense, since the day he wuz brought home to me all torn and bleedin'. There ain't many that's had as much to put up with as I have. I guess most daughters-in-law would jest have ...
— Rosa's Quest - The Way to the Beautiful Land • Anna Potter Wright
... trod in their tattered shoes. Their desires, their needs, all passed into my soul, or my soul passed into them. It was the dream of a man awakened." One day while he and a friend of his were watching a beggar pass by, the friend was so astonished to see Balzac touch his own sleeve; he seemed to feel the rent which gaped at the elbow ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... trying to comfort himself by reading the Psalms, when a poor man came to the door and begged for a piece of bread. The king gave him half his last loaf and the little wine left in the pitcher. The beggar vanished; the loaf was unbroken, the pitcher brimful of wine; and fishermen came in bringing a rich haul of fish from the river. In the night St. Cuthbert appeared to the king in a dream and promised him victory. We see at least what notion the generations nearest to ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... Impolite beggar! What was there about this shadow that suggested to Peter the thought that this whole incident had happened before? That this man belonged to another life that Peter had lived? Peter shrugged off the illusion, fumbled in his pocket and produced ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... locked till the next representation. Then the Catholic religion makes no distinctions between poverty and wealth—no pews for the aristocracy well warmed and furnished, or seats set apart for the rich and well dressed; here the church is open to all, and the beggar in rags comes and takes his place by the side of the lady in silks, and both, kneel on the same pavement, for the moment at least and in that place reduced ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... invested somewhere, and they have promised to find out if it really is so, and to realise it for me; and I have given them the necessary powers to do so; so you see I shall not land in England actually a beggar." ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... be called 'benefactor.' 'Benefactor to you, indeed, sir! ... I'm doing myself a benefit, and not you, sir!' (when he was angry or indignant, he always addressed people with greater formality). 'Give to a beggar once,' he used to say, 'and give him twice, and three times.... And—if he should come a fourth time, give to him still—only then you might say too: "It's time, my good man, you found work for something else, not only for your mouth."' 'But, uncle,' ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... the central likenesses, the things which, in all mankind, are identical. There are the same wants, the same sorrows, the same necessity for the same cleansing beneath the queen's robes and the peer's ermine, the workman's jacket and the beggar's rags. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... cheek, you know!" said Tipping, edging up against him with a dangerous inclination first to jostle aggressively, and then maul his unconscious rival. "You just mind what I say. I'm not going to have Dulcie bothered by a young beggar in the second form; she deserves something better than that, anyway, and I tell you that if I once catch you talking to her in the way you did just now, or if I hear of her favouring you more than any other fellows, I'll give you the very juiciest licking you ever had in ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... "She is plainly related to the L——s, or what does she at their house?" She is, in all probability, your wife's cousin. Nine times out of ten, at least, this is the case. Her garb is something between a gentlewoman and a beggar, yet the former evidently predominates. She is most provokingly humble, and ostentatiously sensible to her inferiority. He may require to be represt sometimes—aliquando sufflaminandus erat—but there is no raising her. You send her soup at dinner, and she begs to be helped after the gentlemen. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... I have another bad match: a bankrupt, a prodigal, who dare scarce show his head on the Rialto; a beggar, that used to come so smug upon the mart.—Let him look to his bond: he was wont to call me usurer;—let him look to his bond: he was wont to lend money for a Christian courtesy;—let him look to ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare
... bridge laughed: "You are a little beggar, you mean? Oh, very well: then over my bridge ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... and Penelope (q. v.), who an infant when his father left for Troy was a grown-up man on his return; having gone in quest of his father after his long absence found him on his return in the guise of a beggar, and whom he assisted in ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Tom Beggar shall brave it, and Wily Will too, Simplicity shall knave it, wherever we go: With lustly bravado, take care that care will, To catch it and snatch it we have the ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... the conclusion that Lord Ralles was in love with Miss Cullen, for he kept making low asides to her; and from the fact that she allowed them, and indeed responded, I drew the conclusion that he was a lucky beggar, feeling, I confess, a little pang that a title was going to win such a nice ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... for restful death I cry, As, to behold desert a beggar born, And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity, And purest faith unhappily forsworn, And gilded honour shamefully misplaced, And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted, And right perfection wrongfully disgraced, ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... extolled as heroic. When children grow up, they learn the value of money; their generosity will then cost them rather more effort, and yet can be rewarded only with the same expressions of gratitude, with the same blessings from the beggar, or the same applause ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... poor wretches in turn became brigands and preyed upon those weaker than themselves. Through all this Borrow had to penetrate in order to reach Madrid. Had the road been familiar to him he would have performed the journey alone, dressed either as a beggar or as a gypsy. It is obvious that he appreciated the hazardous nature of the journey he was undertaking, for he asked Mr Brandram, in the event of his death, to keep the news from old Mrs Borrow as long as possible and then to go ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... passion was most romantic. I never thought of disparity in rank. Why should I? That could not blind the eyes of my imagination. She was beautiful, and that was all, and all in all to me; and had our stations been exchanged, and more than exchanged; had I been King Cophetua, or she the beggar-maid, I should have gloried in her just ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... haven't, you duffer!" put in young Bawdrey, with a laugh. "You've got eight fingers—eight fingers and two thumbs. This bony Johnny has nine fingers and two thumbs. That's what makes him a freak. I say, dad, open the beggar's ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... at the main portal and had even pulled the bell. Then, for the first time, my action occurred to me. No one knew me. I neither could nor dare say who I was. I had wandered for weeks about the mountains, and looked like a beggar. What should I say? For whom should I ask? There was little time for consideration, however, for the door opened and a servant in princely livery stood before me, and regarded ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... those who were less beautiful, and make All harsh and crooked purposes more vain Than in the desert is the serpent's wake 620 Which the sand covers—all his evil gain The miser in such dreams would rise and shake Into a beggar's lap;—the lying scribe Would his own ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... his ruined fortune for repair, how is his struggling soul, if superior to his fate, to brook the ostentation of patronage, and the insolence of condescension? Yes, yes, the world will save the poor beggar who is starving; but the fallen wretch, who will not cringe for his support, may consume in his own wretchedness without ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... daring genius; his elevation of thought; his building castles in the air; his prodigality; his neglect of things serious and useful; his vain opinion of his own merit; and his affectation of preference and distinction: from his mother he inherits his indigence, which makes him a constant beggar of favours; that importunity with which he begs; his flattery; his servility; his fear of being despised, which is inseparable from him. This addition may be made; viz. that poetry, like love, is a little ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... a sociable disposition, Mr Sudberry was about to address this ill-favoured beggar—for such he evidently was—when the coach came round a distant bend in the road at full gallop. It was the ordinary tall, top-heavy mail of the first part of the nineteenth century. Being a poor district, ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... large stone to take out a little pebble from his shoe, when he saw, at some distance, a beggar approaching him. He had on a loose sort of coat, mended with different-coloured rags, amongst which the blue and the russet were the predominant. He had a short knotty stick in his hand, and on the top of ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... Profanity, or Superstition: And a famous Person returning hence, could in a Sermon before the Parliament, profess, I have now been seven Years in a Country, where I never Saw one Man drunk, or heard one Oath sworn, or beheld one Beggar in the Streets all the while. Such great Persons as Budaeus, and others, who mistook Sir Thomas Moor's UTOPIA, for a Country really existent, and stirr'd up some Divines charitably to undertake a Voyage thither, might now have certainly found a Truth in their Mistake; New-England was a true ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... And also, ye yourselves will succor those that stand in need of your succor; ye will administer of your substance unto him that standeth in need; and ye will not suffer that the beggar putteth up his petition to you in vain, and turn him out ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... me make my approach, when I lye downe With counter-wrought and travers eyes; With peals of confidence batter the towne; Had ever beggar yet the keyes? No, I will vary stormes with sun and winde; Be rough, and offer calme condition; March in and pread, or starve the garrison. Let her make sallies hourely: yet I'le find (Though all beat of) ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... hot work,' said I, 'if there be many of those fighting scenes that beggar description, among ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... not free to choose the man whom I will love? Then should I be lower than the meanest girl in all my provinces. Nay, he hath won my heart, and with it goes my hand, and throne, and all I have — ay, had he been a beggar instead of a great lord fairer and stronger than any here, and having more wisdom and knowledge of strange things, I had given him all, how much more so being what he is!' And she took his hand and gazed proudly on him, and holding it, stood there boldly facing the people. And such ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... little beggar," said Jem, stroking the bird's back with the end of the spear. "I should just like to have you at home to run in and out among ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... skill which civilized work develops in a man. And you grow not empty but full, choked with evil life. Wretched are they that hunger and thirst after nothing good, for they also shall be filled. Herein is democracy, that whether you are a beggar's son or the son of Croesus you cannot escape from yourself—you cannot bribe or frighten yourself into being anything else than what your own hungers and thirsts have ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... you a yard of tenpenny stuff for twenty of Mr. Wood's half-pence? No, not under two hundred at least, neither will I be at the trouble of counting, but weigh them in a lump. I will tell you one thing further, that if Mr. Wood's project should take it will ruin even our beggars: for when I give a beggar an half-penny, it will quench his thirst, or go a good way to fill his belly; but the twelfth part of a half-penny will do him no more service than if I should give him three pins out ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... beggar to work, Frank," his brother said admiringly. "I worked for a bit myself pretty hard at Verdun, and got up French well enough to pass with, but then you see there was no other mortal thing to do, and I knew that it would be useful to me if ever I saw a chance ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... both of one mind for once, eh? (To himself.) Poor old beggar! Got the sack! That explains a lot. Well, I won't tell him anything about ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 24, 1891 • Various
... I see sir you are liberall in offers, You taught me first to beg, and now me thinkes You teach me how a beggar ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... BEGGAR O Gentlemen, I thank you; I've had the saddest dream that ever troubled The heart of living creature.—My poor Babe Was crying, as I thought, crying for bread When I had none to give him; whereupon, I put a slip of foxglove in his hand, Which pleased him so, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... like the dishonest jobbers, to foreign countries. His all, with the exception of one diamond, worth about five or six thousand pounds sterling, was invested in the French soil; and when he left that country, he left it almost a beggar. This fact alone ought to rescue his memory from the charge of knavery, so often and so unjustly ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... touched with the most scrupulous consciousness of honour. It is not the produce of riches only, but of the hard earnings of labour and poverty. It is drawn even from the bitterness of want and misery. Not a beggar passes, or perishes in the streets, whose mite is not ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... happiness had fled. There was not a laugh left in all the sad world that had abruptly grown old, and savorless. A vagrant, aged, dirty, ragged, accosted him, begging alms, and without looking up, Jimmy thrust a hand into his pocket and took therefrom a dollar note. The beggar mumbled thanks, stamped his feet, turned away, and then came back and said, "Hope you're not down on your luck. I wish ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... begging. I have spent a whole night at a time begging for a few pennies and supplicating for the salvation of others. What waste of energy. Each time that we send up such a weak supplication as the attitude of a beggar, with the timid, frightful thoughts that only a beggar's mind can have—this condition of mind, cross circuits the power to bring into our lives the ...
— The Silence • David V. Bush
... have pity on the poor, have pity on a beggar who has trodden the bare world this many a year, and give me some labour to do, the hardest there is, for I am the ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats
... to impress you," Kelly had retorted. "I want to show you how well I've done. I always do the same when I get hold of any of you fellows from out there. Yet," he paused and looked at the other keenly, "you're such a queer beggar, that I don't suppose you are impressed. I needn't have tried it on you, after all," but, none the less, he had declined to let his companion go, and it had been past three when a sleepy night porter admitted Jimmy to the hotel, Kelly having declared his ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... strode the carpet more fiercely. "Wicked improvidence! Shameful profligacy; callous-hearted man! To live a rogue and die a beggar—leaving his daughter to the ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... stripping me Of my prophetic garb, and in that garb Already has he, with unpitying eyes, Seen me and mine the foeman's laughing-stock. I had to bear the name of tramp, be spurned As a poor famished beggar on the street. And now the prophet to unprophet me Has led me into this decoy of death, Where for the altars of my sire, the block Of butchery soon must my hot life-blood drink. Yet shall we not fall unavenged of heaven. Another minister of justice comes, His ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... believes, though we are not so fond of vain and superfluous ceremonies, snow-white neckcloths and surplices, as the church is. We likewise think that there is no harm in a sermon by the road-side, or in holding free discourse with a beggar beneath a hedge, or a tinker," he added, smiling; "it was those superfluous ceremonies, those surplices and white neckcloths, and, above all, the necessity of strictly regulating his words and conversation, which drove John Wesley out of the church, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Scotch chap sick at Hamburg," he continued. "The boss is a secret beggar, with pots of money, they say. We chartered out of the Clyde, and picked him ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... house is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... interminable series of rooms and corridors. I gave the signal to Mr. Beresford, who was nervously waiting for it in the wings, and the curtain went up on Hynde Horn disguised as the auld beggar man at the king's gate. Mr. Beresford was reading the ballad, and we took up the tableaux at the point where Hynde Horn has come from a far countrie to see why the diamonds in the ring given him by his ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... vase or so, The Saviour at his sermon on the mount, St. Praxed in a glory, and one Pan, And Moses with the tables ... but I know Ye mark me not! What do they whisper thee, Child of my bowels, Anselm? Ah, ye hope To revel down my villas while I gasp, Bricked o'er with beggar's mouldy travertine, Which Gandolf from his tomb-top chuckles at! Nay, boys, ye love me—all of jasper, then! There's plenty jasper somewhere in the world— And have I not St. Praxed's ear to pray Horses for ye, and brown Greek manuscripts. That's if ye carve ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... Originally the simple burial-place of the great apostle who in the fourth century Christianised Gaul and who, in his day a brilliant missionary and worker of miracles, is chiefly known to modern fame as the worthy that cut his cloak in two at the gate of Amiens to share it with a beggar (tradition fails to say, I believe, what he did with the other half), the abbey of Saint Martin, through the Middle Ages, waxed rich and powerful, till it was known at last as one of the most luxurious religious houses in Christendom, with kings for ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... utterly ignominious have occurred?" she ejaculated—"who dares to carry his head erect after Germany has been thus trampled under foot! The Emperor of Germany has begged the invader to make peace; he has humbly solicited it like a beggar asking alms! And has the conqueror graciously granted his request? Oh, tell me every thing, Frederick! What took place at that interview? What did they ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... caressing a wench. We are your judges. You have entered the Kingdom of Argot, without being an argotier; you have violated the privileges of our city. You must be punished unless you are a capon, a franc-mitou or a rifode; that is to say, in the slang of honest folks,—a thief, a beggar, or a vagabond. Are you anything of that sort? Justify ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... of laughter, and forbidden plainly by Aristotle, is that they stir laughter in sinful things; which are rather execrable than ridiculous: or in miserable, which are rather to be pitied than scorned. For what is it to make folks gape at a wretched beggar, or a beggarly clown? or, against law of hospitality, to jest at strangers, because they speak not English so well as we do? what do we ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... wilderness? Tell him there are no such ravens hereabout; else had I ravenously limed the house-tops and set springes in the gutters. Inform him that my purse is no better lined than his own broken skull: it is void as a beggar's protestations, or a butcher's stall in Lent; light as a famished gnat, or the sighing of a new-made widower; more empty than a last year's bird-nest, than a madman's eye, or, in fine, than the friendship of ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... Mandarin. Who ever saw a Mandarin, even on a tea-chest, without his fan? In China and Japan to this day every one has a fan; and there are fans of all sorts for everybody. The Japanese waves his fan at you when he meets you, by way of greeting, and the beggar who solicits for alms has the exceedingly small coin "made on purpose" for charity presented to him on the tip of ...
— Harper's Young People, April 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... of that city. The Frankish church was reared upon the spot where, in pagan times, one bitter winter day, a Roman soldier parted his mantle with his sword and gave half of the garment to a naked beggar; and so was memorialized in art and stone what was called the divine spirit of giving, whose unbelieving exemplar afterward became a saint. The Boston church similarly expresses the faith of those who believe in what they ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy
... to let you know they are Orphans of Providence just fallen under your Protection. In a Word, demanding Money upon the Road, is now so agreeably perform'd, that 'tis much the same with asking an Alms. The poor Beggar wou'd rob you if he durst, and the Gentleman Beggar will not rob you if you will but give a decent Alms suitable to his Quality. I thought my time so well spent to hear this Landlord plead in favour of Padding, that I told my Companion I had often known the time that I wou'd have willingly ...
— Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins (1718) • Daniel Defoe
... disaster, wickedness and want, that all he can find to do in this big and busy world is to sit on the sidewalk and lacerate the public ear with those dreadful discords. And yet, if death were to step up to that beggar's side and offer him release, instant and sure, in the form of a falling brick or a horse running amuck on the crowded sidewalk, he would cling to the miserable shred he calls life as eagerly as though he were the crown prince himself, ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... is the Germans' own, not mine. "' How savoury a thin roast veal is!' said one Hamburg beggar to another. 'Where did you eat it?' said his friend, admiringly. 'I never ate it at all, but I smelt it as I passed a great man's house while the dog was being fed.'" (Ilse, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... quartermaster!" roared the skipper to the top of his voice and dancing up and down the bridge in his excitement. "Luff, you beggar, luff!" ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... tools? Do you get along with your books so fast you don't know what to do with your time? August Scheffer is just like his father, he never, as long as he lived, found out the use of money; if he had, his wife wouldn't have been left a beggar.' ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... an old man, with a chessboard of inlaid stone, which he hasn't an idea of selling; but finds it excellent to 'move on,' without being checkmated as a beggar without visible means of s'port. The first time he brought it round, and held it out square to Caper, that cool young man, taking a handful of coppers from his pocket, arranged them as checkers on the board, without taking any notice of the man; ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... basket of nuts and fruit to places of public entertainment, so that in time he laid by a considerable amount of money. Brutus Billy was brimful of story and anecdote. He died in Chapel Court in 1854, in his eighty-seventh year. This worthy man was perhaps the model for Billy Waters, the negro beggar in Tom and Jerry, who is so indignant at the beggars' supper on seeing "a ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... heavy flakes, and the manufactory threw its red glared light over the neighbourhood, a person of the most abject appearance presented himself at the entrance, praying for permission to share the warmth and shelter which it afforded. The humane workmen found the appeal irresistible, and the apparent beggar was permitted to take up his quarters in a warm corner of the building. A careful scrutiny would have discovered little real sleep in the drowsiness which seemed to overtake the stranger; for he eagerly ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... Bhikshu, beggar or mendicant, because they live on alms. Bhikshacaryam occurs in Brihad-Ar. ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... am to think of such a thing!" exclaimed she impatiently, as she rose from the door stone. "I am a beggar, and what right have I to think of being a fine lady, while my poor sick mother has nothing to eat and drink? It is very hard to be so poor, but I suppose it is ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... may be of use to procure me the revocation of that most dreadful part of my father's curse, which only remains to be fulfilled. The voice of Nature must at last be heard in my favour, surely. It will only plead at first to my friends in the still conscious plaintiveness of a young and unhardened beggar. But it will grow more clamorous when I have the courage to be so, and shall demand, perhaps, the paternal protection from farther ruin; and that forgiveness, which those will be little entitled to expect, for their own faults, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... justice-seat; The brown-backed beggar in the street; The spinner in the sun; The reapers reaping in the wheat; ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... great castle gate when he heard a voice which was tired and weak, and it said: "Will you please give me something?" Sir Launfal looked in surprise, and there, crouching beside the castle gate, was a beggar, poor and ragged and weak, and it was he who had asked in a tired voice, "Will you please give me something?" Sir Launfal looked at him and frowned, and said in his heart, "Why does this beggar lie at my castle gate to spoil the beauty of the morning?" But, because he was a knight and felt that ...
— A Child's Story Garden • Compiled by Elizabeth Heber
... difference, methinks, between me and the other servants. I suppose he hath left me mourning; but, i'fackins! if that be all, the devil shall wear it for him, for me. I'd have his worship know I am no beggar. I have saved five hundred pound in his service, and after all to be used in this manner.—It is a fine encouragement to servants to be honest; and to be sure, if I have taken a little something now and then, others ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... it; and so highly do I think of Flora, that; you are the only man in England for whom I would say so much.—But before you shake my hand so warmly, there is more to be considered.—Your own family—will they approve your connecting yourself with the sister of a highborn Highland beggar?' ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... majesty always came in slippers, but forced them to embrace at times forbidden by the law. He had attempted to lie with his mother Bathsheba, whom he had almost torn to pieces. At this the rabbins assembled in great haste, and taking the beggar with them, they gave him the ring and the chain in which the great magical name was engraven, and led him to the palace. Asehmedai was sitting on the throne as the real Solomon entered; but instantly he shrieked ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... I think it is a real talent, and I feel the strongest interest in him. My young friend, James Payn, went a fortnight or three weeks ago to Lasswade and spent an evening with Mr. De Quincey. He speaks of him just as you do, marvellously fine in point of conversation, looking like an old beggar, but with the manners of a prince, "if," adds James Payn, "we may understand by that all that is intelligent and courteous and charming." (I suppose he means such manners as our Emperor's.) He began by saying that his life was a mere misery to him from nerves, and that he ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... where the flower-beds were tidy and prim; dreaded to soil or rumple his spotless white robe and his shining black cowl; a spiritual sybarite, shrinking from the sight of the crowd seething in the streets, shrinking from the idea of stripping the rags off the beggar in order to see his tanned and gnarled limbs; shuddering at the thought of seeking for muscles in the dead, cut-open body; fearful of every whiff of life that might mingle with the incense atmosphere ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... very comforting, and do devout souls find consolation therein? The ambitious man, the rascal, the tyrant, the rake, all those haughty sinners who abuse life, and whom Death holds by the hair, are destined to be punished, without doubt; but are the blind man, the beggar, the madman, the poor peasant, recompensed for their long life of misery by the single reflection that death is not an evil for them? No! An implacable melancholy, a ghastly fatality, overshadows the artist's work. It resembles a bitter ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... the poor Scotch lad, who, by living on beggar's fare, managed to get an education in theology and medicine, must evermore stand as one of the great pioneers of Central African exploration. When on the last day of October, 1816, that memorable year in missions, he set sail for the Cape of Good Hope, he ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... will tell you—I'm no good at explaining things. Ask your mother when you get home, and then remember that I said that you were Queen Cophetua, and I the Beggar Man." ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... up to the Bridge Deck to play Shuffle-Board, the Representative of the Tightest little Island on the Map took out his Note-Book and made the following Entry: "Every Beggar living in the States is a ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... excellent example of the power of dress, young Oliver Twist was! Wrapped in the blanket which had hitherto formed his only covering, he might have been the child of a nobleman or a beggar; it would have been hard for the haughtiest stranger to have assigned him his proper station in society. But now that he was enveloped in the old calico robes which had grown yellow in the same service, he was badged and ticketed, and fell into ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... Bolingbroke, he had said, was a cowardly blackguard, who loaded a gun which he was afraid to fire off himself, and left a shilling to a beggarly Scotchman to pull the trigger after his death. The inference was inevitable; and though Reeve was neither a Scotchman nor a beggar, he unquestionably felt the sting, coming, as it did, from a friend of more than forty years' standing, Abraham Hayward [Footnote: See ante, vol. i. pp. 12, 34.]. The friendship was not unnaturally broken, nor does the old intimacy appear to ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... was not what she ought to say. And as she stopped and looked at the words she began herself to wail somewhat as Robin had wailed in the dark when she would not listen or go to her. It was like a beggar's letter—a beggar's! Telling him that she had no money and no food—and would be turned out for unpaid rent. And that the baby was crying ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... rhymes illustrate the disposition of the Chinese to nickname every one, from the highest official in the empire to the meanest beggar on the street. One of the great men of the present dynasty, a prime minister and intimate friend of the emperor, goes by the name of Humpbacked Liu. Another may be Cross-eyed Wang, another Club-footed Chang, another Bald-headed Li. Any physical deformity or mental peculiarity may ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... business six good hours of thinking in this verandah. My justice had been made a fool of; I don't suppose that I was ever angrier. Next day, I had the conch sounded and all hands out before sunrise. One took one's gun, and led the way, with Obsequiousness. He was very talkative; the beggar supposed that all was right now he had confessed; in the old schoolboy phrase, he was plainly 'sucking up' to me; full of protestations of goodwill and good behaviour; to which one answered one really can't remember what. Presently the tree came in sight, and the hanged man. ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... hereafter to whatsoever thou pleasest. I agree, and am of the same mind with thee, indifferent to all things. Lead me whither thou pleasest. Let me act what part thou wilt, either of a public or a private person, of a rich man or a beggar.'"[845] "Show those qualities," says Marcus Aurelius, "which God hath put in thy power—sincerity, gravity, endurance of labor, aversion to pleasure, contentment with thy portion and with few things, benevolence, frankness, no love of superfluity, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... before she went to school. She is worth two of Mr Richard. They're each of them just the same as they were when they were children, when they broke that window in the chapel, and he ran away home, and she came knocking at our door, with a single knock, just like a beggar's, and I went to see who it was, and was quite startled to see her round, brown, honest face looking up at me, half-frightened, and telling me what she had done, and offering me the money in her savings bank to pay for it. We never should have heard of Master Richard's ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Don Miguel—the picture is there still, at the Ajuda; and ah me! where is poor Mig? Well, it is these State lies and ceremonies that we persist in going to see; whereas a man would have a much better insight into Portuguese manners, by planting himself at a corner, like yonder beggar, and watching the real ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the beggar. I couldn't stand his infernal manner. But it never occurred to me that he was a bad hat. I merely thought him a pretentious young ass who didn't know his place," ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... authorities. A man covered with a sheepskin, old and tattered, with a miserable capon his head, boldly mounted the steps of the Kremlin. Under this filthy disguise an elegant costume was concealed; and when a stricter surveillance was instituted, this bold beggar himself was suspected, arrested, and carried before the police, where he was questioned by the officer of the post. As he made some resistance, thinking this proceeding somewhat arbitrary, the sentinel put his hand on his breast to force ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... right stalking about without means, and more from appearance a beggar. I feel my independence; but even all this would be, and was forgotten, for I was one with you. Time more propitious will arrive yet. Do not act rashly or in haste. I would prefer your first query, "Go and see how it will be taken at ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... Now there was a certain rich man, and he was clothed in purple and fine linen, faring sumptuously every day: 20 and a certain beggar named Lazarus was laid at his gate, full of sores, 21 and desiring to be fed with the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table; yea, even the dogs came and licked his sores. 22 And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and that he was carried ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... footsteps to the scene of their long sleep; let the chiseled epitaph repeat their names, and tell us where repose the nobly good and wise! It is not true that all are equal in the grave. There is no equality even there. The mere handful of dust and ashes, the mere distinction of prince and beggar, of a rich winding sheet and a shroudless burial, of a solitary grave and a family vault—were this all, then, indeed it would be true that death is a common leveler. Such paltry distinctions as those of wealth and poverty are soon leveled by the spade and mattock; ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... risk of capture for each and all. There must be some powerful motive to make them take such risks. Such men risk nothing except for money. But there are no banks here to be looted, no strangers to be waylaid in dark alleys, not even a blind beggar to steal ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... knows good from evil!" exclaimed the trapper, in English. "To some He grants cunning, and on others He bestows the gift of manhood! It is humbling, and it is afflicting to see so noble a creatur' as this, who has fou't in many a bloody fray, truckling before his superstition like a beggar asking for the bones you would throw to the dogs. The Lord will forgive me for playing with the ignorance of the savage, for He knows I do it in no mockery of his state, or in idle vaunting of my own; but in order to save ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... favorably of the operation of the apprenticeship in Barbadoes, and gave the negroes a decided superiority over the lower class of whites. He had seen only one colored beggar since he came to the island, but he was infested with multitudes ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... sung. But what's his device? Parnassus with the sun and the laurel?[42] I wonder this owl dares look on the sun; and I marvel this goose flies not the laurel: his device might have been better, a fool going into the market-place to be seen, with this motto: Scribimus indocti; or, a poor beggar gleaning of ears in the end of harvest, with ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... said, breathlessly; "particularly the fellow they called the Fibber. Just one round would be enough for the old beggar. Let's come out into the playground; I shall catch it if I ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... his rifle and stepped closer, his voice vibrating with astonishment. "Blimme, 'ere's a go!... beggar of a nigger givin' me wot-for 's if 'e was a gent! 'Oo in 'ell d'ye ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... you as a beggar," he said, jestingly, taking a piece of bread-and-butter from the plate she held before him. "I asked as a friend. My dad is rich, ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad
... with interesting Musical Anecdotes; the Greek Fables respecting the origin of Music; the rise and progress of Musical Instruments; the early Musical Drama; the origin of our present fashionable Concerts; the first performance of the Beggar's Opera, &c. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 25. Saturday, April 20, 1850 • Various
... preceded by Death, playing on a beggar's lyre or hurdy-gurdy, are driven by the angel ...
— The Dance of Death • Hans Holbein
... Onions may have been his undoing. That's the beggar's skin on the floor. But you should have seen ...
— Five Little Plays • Alfred Sutro
... "Nervy beggar," muttered Chet. "If I had a gun I'd know what to do. But say," he added, as a happy thought struck him, "there's Dad's!" He was out of bed and across the room before Billie could do more than gasp. ...
— Billie Bradley and Her Inheritance - The Queer Homestead at Cherry Corners • Janet D. Wheeler
... food here," thought the cold and hungry little maiden, as she stood knocking at the door, just like a tiny beggar child. She had had nothing to eat for two long days. Oh, ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... they pass'd that Poor Law Bill; That's true, beyond a doubt; The poor they've treated very ill— There, kick that beggar out! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... she was tempted to comply; but her second thoughts were absolutely against it.—Those very reasons which would have prevailed with almost any other woman, made her obstinate to refuse:—the more she found him worthy, the less could she support the thoughts of giving him a beggar for a wife; and the more she loved him, the less could she content to be obliged to him; so she took but a small time for consideration, before she returned an answer ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... soldier, laughing and giving the child a coin. "He is a useful little beggar. You should see that tongue of his flick out and catch an unwary fly ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton |
